


already the world entire

by pearwaldorf



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, M/M, Multi, Team as Family, Wing Kink, Wingfic, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 05:46:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3238535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearwaldorf/pseuds/pearwaldorf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He thinks it over for a few days, because he’s not completely stupid, just mostly. But deep down he knows that if it’ll help Steve, there’s not a thing in the world he wouldn’t do."</p><p>Or, Sam Wilson gets actual wings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	already the world entire

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to [longwhitecoats](http://archiveofourown.org/users/longwhitecoats/pseuds/longwhitecoats) for looking this over.
> 
> Title is from Ilse Bendorf's "[Catch a Body](http://eros-turannos.tumblr.com/post/36384297035/catch-a-body-by-ilse-bendorf)".
> 
> (I couldn't decide and the characters wouldn't tell me if this was an OT4-type relationship, so your interpretation is as valid as mine.)

Sam doesn’t know much about the parties involved who have approached him about this new experimental procedure, but he’s been assured they’re trustworthy. All the old alliances shifted once SHIELD was destroyed, and they’ve lead to some very strange bedfellows. Some of them, like Stark and the Wakandans, he knows; others, like the Asgardians, he’s only heard of in passing. They stress (a little too much, but he understands why) the procedure is completely voluntary, and he can take all the time he needs to decide. He thinks it over for a few days, because he’s not completely stupid, just mostly. But deep down he knows that if it’ll help Steve, there’s not a thing in the world he wouldn’t do. He tells them this and they nod, as if it was the answer they expected.

\--

They warned him it would hurt. They were less specific on how much. Steve keeps interrupting the procedure every time Sam’s face screws up in pain. He asks for a minute alone with Steve, who’s doing that thing with his jaw where he’s trying to keep in a surfeit of emotion, and only barely. 

“Hey.” Sam looks him in the eye. “Did you let them stop when they wanted to?” 

“No. No, I didn’t.” Steve’s shoulders drop, conceding the point. He kisses Sam hard and rough and desperate, like he’ll never see him again. 

When the scientists file back into the room, he sees Barnes and Natasha with them. They flank him silently, and he is grateful for their presence. Barnes lets him grip his left hand when it hurts so much he thinks he’s going to pass out. Natasha murmurs what might as well be nonsense to him, but it’s low and rhythmic and gives him something else to focus on. A long moment or an eternity passes, and they are done. The last thing he remembers is Barnes and Natasha helping him into a bed, making sure he lays on his side. One of them kisses his forehead before resting a hand on his shoulder, just for a moment.

\--

When he can stand up and walk without pain, they take him to a big empty warehouse and step back. He’s been told all he has to do is think about what he wants, and it will happen. If that’s not magic, Sam’s not sure what else he would call it. He decides to start slow, and thinks really hard about feathers as far as the eye can see, overlapping and precisely arranged. He hears a quiet, collective gasp, and opens his eyes to see everybody looking just slightly past him. There’s a glimmer of silver at the edge of his vision. He’s still not sure how exactly it all works, but when he thinks about examining the wings, one of them curls towards his body. He touches it experimentally, and finds there’s sensation on both sides. He jerks, surprised, and they pull back, as if startled. He feels the way they move behind him, like muscles he forgot he had.

Steve comes towards him, and his hand stretches out before pulling back, like he’s just remembered it would be rude to touch without permission. Sam nods, and Steve runs a finger along the edge of a wing. His touch is inquisitive but gentle, and it sparks something in Sam’s brain, fizzy and pleasurable. He wants Steve to run his hands all over his wings, feel every sensation they have to offer.

“It’s soft.” Steve’s voice is full of wonder and surprise. Sam grabs him around the waist, and thinks of extension, powerful drafts buffeting hair and skittering leaves as his body rises from the ground. When he looks down he’s ten feet up, hovering gently as his wings beat a steady rhythm. There’s a jubilant whoop from the ground (Barnes, he thinks) and a startled yelp from Steve. Sam chuckles as Steve presses closer to him. 

“Scared of a little altitude, Cap?” Steve makes a face at the teasing tone in Sam’s voice, but looks down at the ground and the people below. 

“Not when you’re around to catch me.” The smile crosses his face, soft and slow, and Sam feels so incredibly lucky that he gets to see that every day. He kisses Steve gently and hears a scattering of applause, followed by a wolf whistle. He makes a rude gesture at Natasha, who still has her fingers in her mouth. Steve laughs, and Sam laughs too. It’s going to be weird beyond belief and probably a little scary, but it’ll be all right.

\--

It’s not that he hasn’t seen action. Even parachute jumpers have to know how to fight, but it was mostly defensive, getting hostiles and danger away from the rescue target. Since he met some Dorito-shaped asshole running around the reflecting pool he’s seen a lot more fighting, and he’s accepted that being Avengers-adjacent means he’s going to have to go on the offensive sometimes. He notices the way Barnes’s eyes go flinty when he sees yet another chair where he was wiped and his aim gets better, his punches a little bit harder, his sense of fury a little more righteous.

It’s a milk run op: clear out a small HYDRA base, destroy some files. Until it turns out somebody’s intelligence was sloppy, and there’s way more men than it looks like they can handle. They surge, and Sam’s doing the best he can to take them out before they get closer, but they’re pushing in, and there’s so _many_. All he intends on doing is knocking them back somehow--physically, maybe with gusts from his wings, but he finds himself surrounded by bodies, some of them sliced clean through. As the battle haze clears, he feels the tackiness of drying blood and other things on his wings. It’s too much, and he drops to the ground, breathing hard for air that doesn’t seem to come and fighting waves of nausea. Is this what it’s like to be made a weapon, to be able to kill with barely a thought? He feels monstrous, abominable. 

Barnes puts his hands on Sam's shoulders and starts talking. His tone is firm and authoritative, even if Sam can’t quite make out the words at first. 

“Bird. _Bird._ Sam. Come on. Stay with me.” He slaps Sam’s face gently. “Sam. It’s all right. You’re safe.” Sam has to laugh a little, given how many times he’s been on the other end of this exchange, and it's enough to snap him back, long enough that they can make their evac. In the chopper, the adrenaline goes away and Sam collapses, right onto Barnes’s shoulder. When he wakes up, he finds Barnes cleaning off his wings off the best he can. 

“You don’t have to do that.” Sam says. Barnes squeezes out the cloth he’s been running over Sam’s wings. The water’s mostly clear now.

“I know. But I want to. If that’s all right with you, I mean.” 

“Yeah, it’s all right.” Barnes smiles and moves the rag over another spot on his wing. It’s good, comforting, and he feels more like himself by the time they land.

\--

Sam wraps his wings around the both of them while Steve’s on his knees, creating a small little cocoon from the rest of the world. Steve makes a noise that reverberates down Sam’s length and sucks harder, drawing a gasp from Sam in response. He can’t last much longer, not like this, and he comes, only vaguely aware of the swallow of Steve’s throat.

(He remembers when Steve first broached the topic, so nervous he could barely get the words out. 

“I don’t want you to think I’m using you… that way. Like a thing to get off on. Not that”--here he blushed, pink in all the places Sam could see--”I mean, it’s hot, but it’s also _you_ , and the way they’re a part of you, and--” Sam had stretched out his wings towards him then, letting Steve run his hands over and through them until he thought his mind would overload from sensation. He kissed Steve, affirming and soft and then heated and urgent, enveloping them both with his wings until they pressed together. They both came in their pants like overeager teenagers and laughed afterwards, reminded of what it was like to do something new and unexpected and wonderful.) 

Steve pulls off him, wiping his mouth casually in a way that makes the heat jump in Sam’s belly again, post-orgasm haze or no. He clambers up over Sam and kisses him, salty with an edge of bitterness that Sam licks into his mouth trying to chase. Steve is always so warm, and his hands on Sam as he turns him around are like brands, hot points where their skin meets. It’s a marked contrast with the lube that coats his fingers as he pushes inside Sam, Sam’s hips moving back to try and take them deeper. He’s loose and open from ministrations earlier in the day, but Steve is always so careful, making sure that there’s no chance he’ll hurt Sam accidentally. Or maybe he just wants to watch Sam moan as he fucks him with his fingers, Sam torn between wanting more but not willing to ask, not yet. 

Steve crooks his fingers and hits that spot inside that makes Sam bite out a curse and then a begged request for more. He feels empty as Steve’s fingers pull out. As if in apology, Steve drops a kiss on the base of his spine. He feels Steve’s cock entering him, hard and full and just right. They stay like that for a few moments, Steve planting kisses on the ridges of Sam’s shoulder bones where flesh and wing meet. It’s still a strange feeling, this sensation in both body and additional limbs, but also heady and addictive. 

Steve starts to move, and the combined sensation turns the heat Sam felt previously into a full-on fire, making him cry out. He’s hard again, and painfully aware that there’s nothing he can rub off against, the way Steve is gripping his hips. Sam whimpers as Steve wraps his still-lubed hand around his cock, fucking into it as Steve thrusts into him. He feels Steve reach under his wing to grip his shoulder, and the casual intimacy of the motion sends him over the edge, his wings flaring out reflexively in his climax. He also feels one meet an object which then is no longer there, followed by a crash. But that is for investigation later. He collapses onto the bed, weak-limbed and spent, too tired for languor or wantonness. 

Steve pulls out of him, having come soon after he did. He lays down, pressing a kiss to the tip of Sam’s nose. Sam smiles, blissed-out and exhausted. Steve raises his head up to look over in the direction of the noise. 

“You knocked the lamp over.” 

Sam doesn’t even bother to look up. “It was ugly anyways. I just put it out of its misery.” 

Steve laughs softly. Sam knows he hated that lamp too.

\--

The most peculiar and whimsical thing he’s discovered about his new appendages is that the feathers tinkle quietly in flight. Sam thinks it incongruous with their deadliness and strength, but he comes to find the noise soothing. When he can hear the chiming it means the skies are clear, and it’s just him and the wind. If he’s lucky sometimes he’ll find a thermal and just soar, climbing several hundred feet into the sky and watching the world become smaller below him. It’s meditative in a way he didn’t know he needed, knowing he can see differently, and more than, the rest of the world.

He doesn’t know if it’s a quirk of the brain or old muscle memory, but he never quite shakes the feeling that somebody should be at his side, flying in the air next to him. And suddenly he misses Riley so much it feels like a block of stone in his chest, heavy enough he thinks he's going to fall out of the sky. 

Sam remembers Riley’s sheer unbridled joy the first time he got the wings on him, yelling loud enough to almost blow out Sam’s earpiece. He thinks about how Riley would have laughed at the trepidation he had deciding whether or not to go through with the procedure, the same way he poked fun at Sam’s caution in everything. He would have said yes without hesitation, the same way he plopped the EXO-7 files in front of Sam and said "You are not going to believe this," with that glint in his eyes. Sam climbs higher and drops into a somersault, relishing the whoosh of air past his face and the exhilaration of a controlled fall. By the time he’s back on the ground, the feeling in his chest has subsided to a bittersweet ache. 

Natasha’s sitting on the porch of the house they’re staying at, reading a book. She gets up when she sees him approach, a smile on her face. They come more easily now, at least for him and Steve and Bucky. She smells like wood smoke and whatever’s in her shampoo, homey and familiar. 

“Did you have a good flight?” She asks. He nods and shakes his wings, mussing her hair and rattling the pages of her book. She tries to blow an errant strand of hair out of her face, and fails. Sam brushes it out of her way. Natasha eyes his wings, now neatly folded behind him, or as much as they can be. He could make them go away, but it feels odd without them now, as strange as it would have been to contemplate when he got them. 

“As if I needed another reminder I’m the only human in this little crew.” She smirks, reaching up to ruffle the feathers affectionately. Sam bends down to kiss her forehead. She closes her eyes, like it’s a benediction. 

“You do better than any of us without any fancy serums or metal arms. Or wings.” He pulls her into a hug, and to his surprise, she hugs back. She pulls away after a few moments, tucking her arm into his. 

“Come on, we’ve been keeping dinner until you came back.” They go into the house, glowing and comfortable with light and warmth.

**Author's Note:**

> For the curious, I have compiled an [inspiration board](http://www.pinterest.com/pearwaldorf/sam-wilsons-wings/) containing fanart of Sam with actual wings.


End file.
